The Sweet and Bitter Senses
by VerelLupin
Summary: Rumplestiltskin and Belle's love is complicated. Just as darkness can't live without light, sweetness cannot exists without a bite of bitterness.
1. Her Sweet Sense of Beast

**I'm on a roll people. This is the sweet side. There is a bitter one. **

**Enjoy...I own nothing but I did get a cane that be worthy of Mr. Gold.**

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><p>She sees the shade of his skin when she opens the windows. Its mottled green and gray with a light covering of gold so that the other colors peak out and shimmer in the sunlight. She always liked the sun and now its rays have shades of gray and green in her eyes.<p>

She feels the surprising texture of his skin when he catches her after what would have been a nasty fall from the bookshelf ladder. It's tightly corded and supple with no amount of actual human skin. It doesn't stop her from gripping his neck tighter even when he dips and she puts her feet on the floor. Months later she will ask him for a dragon hide cloak and she will drape it over herself as she reads.

She smells his magic everywhere when she cleans the castle. It's rawness wraps itself around her and the thunder and lighting that accompany the storms he makes smell of rain and earth and leaves. She pushes the windows open and the scents of his storms and her roses meld in harmony.

She hears that high-pitched giggle and she can't help but smile but it's that deeper throatier laugh that only happens when he's gotten an exceptionally good deal that she dreams about. Sometimes when she dusts, she daydreams of giving up her soul for that laugh but then remembers that she is already his and then it's her that begins to giggle like her Beast.

She tastes his honeyed tea and the extra bit that is the darkness in him. He's sweet and bitter but it's so perfectly balanced that nothing will ever come close. She longs to lap him up like her favorite treat of jam and biscuits and pictures the taste of him spread out on her tongue but she opens her mouth more than she should and the bitter overpowers the sweet and all that's left is an aftertaste of what could have been.


	2. His Sweet Sense of Belle

**I'll be posting the bitter side tomorrow. Hopefully.**

**Enjoy...**

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><p>He sees her skin in the light of torches. It's golden and cream and every bit of pale shade in between and it shines brighter with her spirit. His castle has more light when she's done with it and he sees the golden shades are rosier like the delicate flower people think she is. He prefers the gold and takes the name.<p>

He feels more fabric than woman when she falls though what he does feel is more decadent than he remembers even with his previous experience with a wife and its very mystery scares him. He refrains from touching her in anyway and always dancing out her questing reach. So when she requests the cloak he weaves it himself and infuses it with the only bit of him that is still human.

He smells the roses everywhere and he wonders if she carries a garden about with her. Her scent keeps him up at night when he walks his castle corridors for she has been all over it doing her duties. It tortures him with its sweetness and promises of never being enveloped in it himself until the only relief he has is the dungeon he called her room. He sleeps in it sometimes and it occurs to him that it's now their room.

He hears the melody long before he sees his home. The windows are open and beckoning him to listen and he follows his personal siren call. Her playing is unpracticed but she pours so much of her heart into it that he sits and listens until she looks up and apologizes for touching it. He waves the harp to the main room and she plays as he spins. She sings when she doesn't play and he realizes that the sound that tugs tears from his eyes is her clear voice as she serves his tea and he knows no instrument exists that can equal his Belle.

She tastes pure and cold like water from a brook. She is hot and soothing like his favorite tea and is just a refreshing. He barely sips beneath the surface alternating between basking in the coolness and burning in the heat but the dualities of her are too much for his lukewarm courage. He lets go and stays forever mild in climate.


	3. Her Bitter Sense of Mr Gold

**I said there would be a bitter side. Here it is.**

**Enjoy...**

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><p>She sees him across the street standing so still he could have been a statue. A blonde woman helps her out of the hospital but all she can see is him. His skin is no longer gold it has faded along with the rest of him. His hair is a diminished shade and hangs limply where it used to curl up with life. He is not her Rumple. He is the faded Mr. Gold and she wishes she were back in her cell if only to see the real him again even if he is an illusion.<p>

She feels his skin when she trips over Archie's umbrella and after Pongo in his crazy circling has wrapped them up in his leash. She grasps onto the slight shoulders that hold no maniac energy and feels the papery skin stretched over a bone structure that would be handsome if it weren't so thin and perpetually scowling like it is now. She remembers she always preferred rough to smooth but her finger can't stop from softening the line across his surprised brow.

She smells his cologne and instantly recognizes it as the one he wears to be extra intimidating. She hates it and he knows it but he does nothing without a purpose. She hands him the envelope that contains the rent and his smell permeates her clothing and shop for hours. She takes a shower soon after and sits on the roof waiting for a storm to cleanse her of his ordinary persona.

She hears the cane thump its way into the bookshop and she tries not to squirm as it comes closer. The orderlies in that place use to bang on the walls and it sounds so much like his footsteps that she cries out. He raises her from the floor and all she can do is push away blindly. He leaves and she almost imagines that the thumps are a beat that she once danced to in a castle full of trinkets.

She tastes him just once more to convince herself that he is indeed the one she used to love. He tastes of the poison that runs in the queen's apples and it mixes with the liquor she used to build up her courage. The apples are the evidence that he is still in league with the mayor and the intoxicating taste of whiskey she sneaked cannot mask the sickly sweet taste that the darkness she greedily drinks is not her Rumple but Gold is precious to her anyway and she will be drunk on him for the night.


	4. His Bitter Sense of Ms French

**His turn. I so love these two...**

**Enjoy.**

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><p>He sees she is pulled out of that place clad in a hospital gown with no color. Her face is wan and her eyes have returned their blue to the sky. Her shinning golden light is a hard white now but then he wears night masquerading as a designer suit and he feels that she is still too much dove to his crow and yet he offers his black wings to protect her white heart.<p>

He feels her soft lush curves more closely and the thinner garments of this era are more of an embarrassment than the tight leather of their time. He scowls and her finger smooths the line marring his face. He tries not to curse as her skirt rides up and her bare thigh presses against his while others cut the dog's leash. She will have left a mark on him from the encounter that no curse will erase and the pain in his leg is just another reminder.

He smells the cloying roses all around her. He used to enjoy it back when it was his garden that made her smell that way. He heaps on his own armor knowing she hates it, to keep from reaching across the counter and dragging her from the idiot stock boy that works beside her, the betrothed in their real world. She gives him the rent and the rose no longer lingers its now covered by the musk of the boy behind her and he swears he'll buy all their roses if only to smell them while they burn.

He hears the mewling cry that builds in crescendo and matches his thumping staccato. Her body is another instrument and it hits the floor with a deep note. He reaches out to lift her up and her screech of protest adds to the horrid symphony. She runs and the sound fades away and all he can do is continue the solo he made all those years ago when he silenced her voice.

He tastes the spirit in her breath, the apple in his and the combined ice of their chosen lives. Her soul is addicting and he laps at it for he sold his long ago. She drinks up his darkness that is not his but mixed with another more evil and the toxic cocktail that is their fairytale burns up into the night. Her bravery is artificial and will last only long enough for regrets but he cannot deny Ms. French, not when she owns the beast that awakens at the return of its Beauty.


	5. A Sixth Sense of Ever After

**I can't do full angst with these two. I try, I really do but I just have too much fluff in my heart. (hangs head in shame)**

**In case you haven't noticed I spell it Rumplestiltskin, like the show. I actually have a Grimm's fairytale collection book that spells it this way. **I have only seen it spelled Rumpelstiltskin lately. **(totally pointless to the story but I've seen the debates about the spelling and decided to throw in my two cents.)  
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**Enjoy...**

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><p><strong>Hers<strong>

She sees the whirling vortex where the clock tower used to be. She feels for injuries but the blood on her clothing is not hers. The battlefield of what used to be Storybrooke's main street is covered in figures awaiting the end of the queen. She smells the acrid burn of the town as it tears and arranges itself back into its previous shape.

She hears the shrill scream that signals the long awaited death and cheers rise in a deafening roar but all she yells is one name. She tastes the dungeon floor and opens her eyes knowing they've come back. Berry bushes and rain hit her as she runs desperately through the enchanted forest cleansing her palate of the stale air of her former prison.

She senses him before she reaches the kingdom. The dwarfs try to stop her but she throws herself on the mercy of Snow and James. She begs the newly minted Princess Emma and Belle led by the Huntsman goes to the underground cell of the golden man.

They open it and she rushes inside. Bewildered the princesses and princes of the realms watch as she pledges her life to him and he places her mouth on his. The Dark One banishes in a puff of blue and gold smoke and they have nothing else to fear from the magic still inhabiting him.

**His**

He sees her standing outside what used to be the library when it breaks. Terror grabs his heart as she runs headlong into the fray, sword raised high. He feels and turns each and every body searching for her even though none of the combatants can really die. He smells the dark magic as it burns filling the sky with dark plumes of smoke that choke the air.

He hears her scream his real name and he runs to her but the spell is spent and Storybrooke, Maine is no more and they are once more separated. He tastes the earth of his prison and it mixes with the salty tears coursing unchecked down his face. He's lost her again.

He senses her before the arguing begins, before the Huntsman and Emma have persuaded her parents to let Belle see the infamous Rumplestiltskin. She runs ahead of them and only a very grumpy dwarf manages to hold her back long enough to open the gate for her.

She is up and in his arms before she's fully stepped into the cell. She calls his true name again but there is no fear or anger in her voice. There is nothing but love as she pledges her life to him. He withdraws the dagger from his body and gives it to her so that she may know his devotion.

She drops it uncaring of anything and he places her mouth on his. He sees her surprised look, feels the magic receding. He smells it around them and hears the rush as it gathers and pitches until he thinks his ears will bleed from the noise.

It explodes in a puff of gold and blue and he tastes her lips again. She hugs him and they both feel the gentle hum of the dark one's essence that has been cleansed by true love's kiss. The magic will remain but his evil will not and Rumplestiltskin emerges with his Belle.

Not as an imp or a beast but as a man that will have a happy ending, for she will be with him always.


End file.
